Maple Leafs' upcoming tilt with Ducks a reminder of team's in-season growth

TORONTO — Nobody on the Toronto Maple Leafs is about to make much of the fact their latest effort wasn’t their strongest of recent times.

Whether or not they gained extra credit for aesthetics, the Leafs still took two points off the visiting Calgary Flames on Saturday night. And their next opponent — the Anaheim Ducks come to Toronto on Tuesday — is a good reminder of how far this club has come since the early weeks of the season. Recall, the Leafs left Orange County one day before Halloween having capped a winless four-game set through Las Vegas and California by blowing a 3-1 third-period lead to a Ducks team that has struggled mightily all year long. After the 4-3 overtime setback, panic — at least outside the Blue and White walls of the organization — was in the air.

Upon returning home from that rough roadie, though, Toronto has completely turned things around, going 14-1-4 since the last time they saw an Anaheim squad that presently has the worst points percentage and goal-differential in the league.

“I think we knew there was a lot of hockey ahead of us,” captain John Tavares, casting back to that time, said after practice on Monday. “By no means were we thrilled with where we were at or the way our game was being played, but I think we just kind of stuck with it. [We had] some good discussions internally [about] how we have to be better more consistently and keep working in certain areas and just take it one day at a time and things have snowballed.”

The biggest part of their turnaround, of course, is the fact Toronto often seems to be playing like it has placed a few of those snowballs directly in front of its net. The Leafs are surrendering just 2.11 goals-against per game since Nov. 2, better than every outfit in the NHL in that time period save the league-best Boston Bruins. Toronto’s expected goals during that same stretch is a star-driven 53.45 per cent, good for the seventh-best mark in the league.

Given all that, don’t expect anyone to get too bent out of shape about a semi-sloppy win over the Flames, even if some poor habits from October crept back in. “I still think there was a lot of good to our game,” Tavares said of the most recent W. “It’d be nice to shut every team out every game… I think you're always looking to get better, regardless of the situation.”

Every coach and player will talk about the things adversity can teach and there’s no doubt the Leafs faced their share both when they were scuffling in October and through a month of November where their strong results belied the fact they battled numerous key injuries, especially in goal and on the blue line. Coach Sheldon Keefe said as the team has some healthy bodies trickle back to it, he doesn’t want his charges to relinquish the sense of urgency and hard-to-play-against mentality that allowed it to power through the most taxing times.

“We don't want to lose what we've gained in terms of our mindset,” Keefe said, “because that's really a big, big part of [what allowed us to succeed] is just having the right mindset and recognizing what's given us the opportunity to succeed, that's  been our strong defensive play. We haven’t talked much about how we've managed the puck, but we've done a real nice job of that as a team, [though] not as nearly as good a job against Calgary.”

While Keefe, per his custom this year, didn’t announce whether Matt Murray would make a second straight start or if the team would turn to Ilya Samsonov against Anaheim, you can expect winger Pierre Engvall to draw back in after serving his one-game suspension for high sticking the Kings’ Sean Durzi. Meanwhile, on the blue line, Jordie Benn took part in the full practice Monday and though it doesn’t figure to be versus the Ducks, it appears he could be poised to put an upper-body injury behind him soon and become another option for Keefe on the back end.

Toronto, of course, has had to lean on quite a cast of defencemen thanks to the long injury list. All things being equal, you can expect to see T.J. Brodie paired with Conor Timmins against Anaheim, as the duo has been beside each other the past couple outings.

Brodie returned from an oblique injury that basically kept him out a month on Thursday versus the Los Angeles Kings and was up to 20:25 of ice on Saturday against Calgary after easing back in with 17:27 in the 5-0 laugher versus L.A. Timmins, meanwhile, has now skated in three games for Toronto after being acquired from the Arizona Coyotes on Nov. 23. The 24-year-old right-shot defender had only played eight games total this year (two in the NHL, six in the AHL) before joining Toronto and Keefe really thinks he’s finding his sea legs.

“Brodie, you know what to expect from him and he's really helped Timmins,” Keefe said. “But I think Timmins himself has just settled in nicely for a guy who hasn't played much in the NHL this season — hasn't played much hockey [at all], really, this season — he's getting better each day, good practice here today, he's put in lots of good work with our development team. So we've liked what we've seen from him.”